As we work with Excel spreadsheets, we might be required to count all the cells that contain text. This would be a tedious work if we were to count it manually, especially when dealing with a large group of data. We can use the Excel sumif text criteria to get only those cells that have text in them, and not numbers. In this post, we shall explore various methods to find the sum of cells with text only.
Using Excel formula if cell contains text then sum
Excel provides us with so many formulas do literally everything we can ever think of. To sum cells with text, we can use the SUMIF function to count the number of cells with text. The general formula shall look like the one below;
=COUNTIF (rng, “*”)
Where;
rng refers to the range of cells from which you want to count cells with text.
Notice that we have used the asterisk symbol (*) in the formula when counting text cells.
Figure 1: Using COUNTIF function to count cells with text
Using an array formula to get number of cells with text
We can also use an array formula to count cells with text. A combination of SUM, IF, IS and TEXT functions can help us know how many cells have text in a spreadsheet.
To get the number of cells with text in our above example, we shall use the formula below;
{=SUM(IF(ISTEXT(rng), 1))}
In the example in figure 1 above, we have the formula as;
{=SUM(IF(ISTEXT(A1:A5), 1))}
Figure 2: Counting cells with text using an array formula
In figure 2 above, we have the formula;
{=SUM(IF(ISTEXT(A1:A5),1))}
When entering the above formula, press Ctrl + Shift + Enter.
Using the SUMPRODUCT function to count number of cells with text
You can also use the SUMPRODUCT function to know the number of cells with text. To use the SUMPRODUCT function, select a cell and type in the following formula;
=SUMPRODUCT(--(ISTEXT(rng)))
Figure 3: Using SUMPRODUCT to count cells with text
In figure 3 above, we have the formula below in cell A7;
=SUMPRODUCT(--(ISTEXT(A1:A5)))
When we press Enter, we shall have the total number of cells with text as 3 as shown in cell A7.
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